However, being designed as a can of whoopass in the first place ultimately means that the flame burns twice as bright and half as long. That doesn't mean players don't have a blast with each mode like this before they fade away. And yet, despite our consecutive on the run tweaks to keep URF treading water balance-wise, we still saw the same declining engagement and burnout that we see with other modes. People often forget that URF actually broke our golden rule of not touching Featured Gameplay Modes post-launch, but to try and keep it from becoming stale in the face of wildly toxic champion play patterns, we did anyway. Who doesn't like making more plays?! URF also taught us a fantastic lesson about the novelty of game modes over time and the cost of ongoing maintenance.ДЇeatured Gameplay Modes have been shown to taper off in popularity sharply after a short period of time. Based on the response from players around the world in multiple regions and languages, we extended the length of the mode (twice). Originally planned as an April Fool's Day joke intended only to last one day, we were blown away by the response Ultra Rapid Fire received. Our goal was to still preserve the feel of Summoner's Rift, but change up how you interacted with your champion and played within the map's meta. The end result was the closest we'd ever brushed up against the вЂregular Summoner's Rift meta', but with the twist of an extra player. With the original Hexakill, we wanted to try exploring a new space that modes hadn't really touched yet at that point. '2014 started with a Featured Game Mode meta changeup. For now though, let's get into the modes!' ДЇeatured Game Modes of 2014 By L4T3NCY Hexakill As we've since learned, it would also add additional balance and maintenance costs that we'll share some examples of later in this retro. Adding permanency would constrain the design wiggle room we have to make each mode as unique as possible.

They're designed to make a big splash, with the knowledge they will be removed shortly thereafter. The main design concern (which is personally the most important as it = less fun) is that Featured Gameplay Modes are not designed to be long term engagement experiences. Trying to build a long-term sustainable game mode would actually constrain us from doing things like Doom Bots, URF, Legend of the Poro King, Ascension, etc. This transience is what gives us the creative space try new things and see what works, listen to your feedback, then improve a mode before re-releasing it. Why are Featured Gameplay Modes temporary?ДЇeatured Game Modes are designed from the ground up to be short-term engagement experiences. So healthy champion pick diversity is also good, but is it something we should weigh the success of a mode on? These are all just some of the things we consider when both designing and then weighing an individual mode's success. There's always a few sleeper champions that appear who we could NEVER forecast. Anything goes initially and you guys theory craft cool ideas about the most OP comps and champions for each mode, and surprise us every time. How do you measure fun? Or cool streams, videos, comics, fanart (the list goes on)? Sometimes it's even nice for the mode to help you train in skills (team fights, skill shots) that are transferable over to SR, but should that be a core pillar? We've said before how we like that each Featured Gameplay Mode feels like a wild west of meta for their duration. Then there are modes which produce amazingly cool stuff from you guys in the community that we can't even measure with numbers. We undoubtedly also want you to have FUN! :D As we've mentioned before, we have a few design pillars that help guide the creation of each mode, but we'd like you to discover new or interesting ways to engage with your favourite champions in League of Legends. What does вЂњthe mostвЂќ even mean? Is it the highest single spike of concurrent players? The game you played for the longest? Modes also need to be unique in some way and not just replace or overwrite themselves and other permanent modes. We want to learn from previous modes to help us make even cooler new things, but it's not as simple as just which mode was played the most. 'This is something we're continuously defining for ourselves as Featured Gameplay Modes evolve. What makes a successful Featured Gameplay Mode? This feels like a good time to look back at 2014's Featured Game Modes, what we learned from some of them, and how we arrived at a variety of design decisions along the way. '2014 has come and gone, taking with it the creation of seven new featured game modes for League of Legends! Looking back, we had fun making each and every mode, tackling the unique challenges each one presented, and hope you guys had just as much fun playing them.

League of legends mods